The Van Ness South Tenants Association, representing the tenants of the apartments at 3003 Van Ness Street, NW, submitted on January 31, 2019, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for rent records of seven properties owned or operated by Equity Residential Corporation or its affiliates. The DC Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) processed the request, releasing data on February 21, 2019.
The records reveal that Equity Residential very likely has incorrectly reported the rents received on many of its apartments in rent stabilized buildings, vastly inflating many of the figures. At 3003 Van Ness, Equity was pressuring tenants into signing leases listing the “rent” as several hundred dollars or well over one thousand dollars higher than the amount actually received per month. Equity based annual increases on these inflated figures, breaking DC rental housing law.
The data can be found in three compressed files: